Yasser Arafat transferred millions of dollars in international aid and taxes transferred to the Palestinian Authority by Israel to purchase large quantities of weapons, the PA chairman's former financial aide, Fuad Shubaki, has told the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). Some of the Israeli money, Shubaki told his investigators, was also used to fund Palestinian terror groups.

The bulk of the new Hamas force was sent to chaotic Gaza City, where bearded gunmen in black T-shirts and green vests took up positions along the main streets and at busy intersections, near banks and outside ministry buildings and parliament. In one display, dozens of masked gunmen marched in formation through a major square.

Outside the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, members of the new force stood a few feet away from members of a security branch that answers to Abbas.

And in the southern city of Khan Younis, about 40 members of the new force pulled up to the Education Ministry, jumped from their jeeps and fired in the air to break up a peaceful protest of recent college graduates who want teaching jobs. The teachers were protesting an application fee.

The gunmen moved into the building, where they bludgeoned protesters with clubs and rifles, demonstrators said.

Reporting stuff like that might suggest that everything is not the fault of the Israelis and the West. And that would never do.